


Run Red

by tinylittlebrain



Category: Baldur's Gate, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Baldurs gate AU, Divinity, F/M, Fantasy elements, I'm nerding out and I'll be damned if I'm not dragging everybody down with me, Kylo Ren is a Fallen Paladin, Longing, Pain Train, Rey is a Bhaalspawn, and Guildmaster, forgotten realms elements, just GO WITH IT OMFG, look just go with it ok?, sometimes you just need to go with it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-17 01:54:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13066695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinylittlebrain/pseuds/tinylittlebrain
Summary: Kylo Ren is a fallen Paladin, having rejected his god in favour of a new one. Rey is an orphan, but even so it’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny the truth that is her family.The Lord of Murder shall perishBut in his doom he shall spawn a score of mortal progenyChaos will be sown from their passing~Baldur’s Gate AU. Niche AF. Because I can.---tumblr: tinylittlebrain.tumblr.com





	1. Guildmaster

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, please enjoy this AU.
> 
> I very much wrote this for myself, but hopefully it is still enjoyable. If you have no knowledge of Baldur’s Gate, you might find it helpful to Google the plot. 
> 
> \- tiny

_Gross._

Rey sighed as she regarded the slick of goop that had coated her once pristine armour –she never expected the life of the Paladin to be easy but she had hoped it wouldn’t be quite so… slimy.

Of course, that was to be anticipated in a Beholder Cult, their alien biology creating vast, tissue-like nests by which they exercised almost parasitic control over their human fanatics.

_Well not anymore._

Her boots made an unpleasant squelching sound as she sought the exit to the sewers, and then to the Thieves district, ignoring the blood tricking past her ear to the back of her neck. It was only a small gash, though assuredly Captain Phasma would admonish her over it nonetheless. She had received it in a moment of distraction, when the beast in its panic had breached her mind, scrabbling through her basest fantasies to find–

“ _Miss me_ , Scavenger?”

Ren. Kylo Ren, fallen Paladin turned Guild-master who always seemed two steps ahead of her. It irked her.

“You could’ve _helped_ me if you were just going to hang out at the sewer exit all day.” She snarled as he assisted her up.

“To what end?”

“To cleanse a Beholder cult! You know, the one  _you_ tipped me off about? The one  _you_ were so concerned about?”

Ren shrugged. “It was beginning to disrupt a fencing operation within the sewer system.”

Rey’s jaw dropped. He had  _begged_ her, eyes wet, just days ago.

_Curse those eyes._

He smirked. “Oh Rey, I forget how charmingly adorable your delusions about my nobility are.”

He might have been right about that. She knew it was folly to engage him like this, the  third most powerful man in Athkatla. Knew he had killed Paladins before, ruthless and brutal and efficient when anyone got in his way. And yet…

_There’s light in him._

She was sure of it. Yes, to her Ren had always been a shadow, but not a sinister one. He was more like a breeze that whispered advice and sweet encouragement when she felt trapped like a caged animal in the academy. Nonetheless, she was wary as Ren donned his mask, thieves descending from the shadows to clasp her arms.

“What the–?”

“My estate. You will be my guest.” He paused. “And I would very much like that amulet you retrieved from the beast.”

Rey rolled her eyes.

He would  _not_ be getting that, just as he would not be getting back his grandfather’s sword from her -  _her_ sword - but nonetheless she acquiesced. She was never in Ren’s custody for long, and truthfully a part of her craved these moments, pathetic as that was. Moments where she was _just_ Rey, not the Light of Amn, not the Pauper Paladin, not even the Hand of Helm.

Just _Rey_.

Sure enough, their retinue melted back into the shadows as they entered the estate grounds, Ren’s mask quickly removed as he turned to her, fingers working deftly to remove her armour.

“W-what are you doing?” Rey’s voice was much higher pitched than she intended.

Ren smirked. “You stink. You will bathe and I will have someone clean this in the meantime – I’ve had the water heated for you.”

“I can remove my own armour.” She gritted out.

“Where’s the fun in that?”

The last piece clanked down and Rey almost ran to the bathing chamber, face flushing as she slammed the door and stripped her under-armour and quickly lowered herself in the bath, keeping the amulet firmly on her neck. Small jasmine flowers floated on the water surface - her favourites, though they only bloomed in the a distant Oases as far away as Amkethran.

_How did he…?_

Rey eyed a small bowl of the flowers on the bath’s ledge. They were cold to the touch. Next to them lay a bowl of sugared nuts, again not in season.

Suddenly the bath was too hot. They never spoke of these details, though she always partook in them, and yet each time was something different, something from the past he would never speak of. She had thought she had hated her back then, always growling and screaming at her, bemoaning her ineptitude as he watched.

_Always watching._

And yet, she doubted. Ren wanted her, perhaps, but then again Ren wanted _everything_. They were at war with each other, though the Academy and his abode both rose in the skyline of the wealthy Temple district, eaves almost touching. He was a criminal who wore only finery, who did not see a beautiful thing he did not wish to possess. He was not chaste either, frequenting the brothels though he did not appear to court.

_And this affects you how?_

Rey stared determinedly at the wall. Yes, it was none of her business anyway. Hers was a life dedicated to the people, and though she too was not immune to arousal, there was little to be done in creaking bunk in a crowded room. It was a lonely life, but then that _was_ her life, and always had been. The people loved Rey of the Academy, yes, adored _her,_ but no one had ever, _ever_ loved Rey of the Slums.

_Rey of Nothing_

Still, she was far from certain, and there were times when her vision clouded, when she almost felt she became someone new, someone different entirely.

_Rey of…_

A voice whispered in her mind, but as she grasped for it, it dispersed like smoke. The sugared nuts were suddenly ash in her mouth, her eyes meeting the amulet on her chest.

 _That_ was Ren’s prize. This indulgence was… well, indulgence.

_Enough. The simplest answer is usually the correct one._

She rose then, shaking her head to clear the strange melancholia though her brain seemed to rattle inside it. She wondered that Ren had not knocked yet, or summoned her to dine.

_What’s he up to?_

She found clothes neatly laid out for her, ridiculously luxurious and she hesitated for a second before very carefully putting a silken gown on. Oddly, her neck was still bleeding and though she did not want to sully something so fine, as soon as the garment went over her head Rey felt woozy, the room suddenly spinning as she turned the door handle. By the time she made it to his lounge area, she had crashed to her knees.

“ _REY!”_

Ren’s hands reached for her neck and for a second Rey thought he was taking the opportunity to take the amulet, while she was down, but then she felt a soft tingling.

Oh.

_Oh._

Healing. It was healing magic. Lay Hands, precisely, good and pure and decidedly  _not_  available to Fallen Paladins.

“I knew it.” She smiled dumbly. “ _Ben_.”

He smelled so good, large lips wet and perfect and so very close as his face screwed into one of irritation.

_My Ben._

“Be silent. You got slashed by a Beholder, and I presume you have once again forgone your studies because otherwise you would have known to tell me.”

Ren turned away then, the clink of glass ringing out as he made to pour a viscous dark liquid into a small glass. Soon he was pressing it to her lips, tone softer.

“Drink this.”

She did, perhaps one of the last few people who would accept such a thing from Kylo Ren. The liquid was bitter, as most panaceas were, and her nose wrinkled with the taste as th former paladin continued didactically.

“I mean, it’s textbook – unceasing bleeding, faintness…” He paused, smirking as he relished the exercise, the return to their old dynamic. “Perhaps you should take notes? From memory there’s also melancholia, increased perception and–”

Rey’s lips met his for a brief kiss.

“–Symptoms akin to intoxication.”

Ren looked shocked. Utterly shocked… yet not perturbed. No, there was something else there, something else entirely. 

_Oh._

“You’re in love with me.” She blurted.

Ren groaned. “Perception. _Shit.”_

“You left the Knighthood because you were in love with me.” Rey breathed.

It was so _simple,_ so obvious she wondered how it could have possibly eluded her for so long. Her cheeks felt hot as a new, pleasurable sensation pooled at the pit of her stomach. Something else, another reason lingered too, but at present she found herself wholly wrapped up in the first. She bit her her lip.

“ _Ben.”_

It wasn’t a name, but a plea.

Something in him broke then. She saw it in the brief instant before his lips crashed against hers, hungry and devouring and  _everything_ as he set her veins alight.

“Only you Rey, _only you_.”

He only loved her? Or was it that only she was allowed to use that name? Rey found that the answer did not matter as he murmured the words to her lips before deepening the kiss, his fingers brushing her cheek and twisting pleasurably in her hair. Before long his tongue deepened the kiss, pressing her backwards to sink on the nearby chaise, body dwarfing hers.

She felt electrified, mind hazy with want as it hearkened back to her many dreams, her many distracted moments - that latent, buried attraction made real, searing across her skin. It was both too much and too little, and her arms grasped him, one hand clasping his shoulder and the other scraping down the nape of his neck, rewarding her with a savage gasp as he arched against her.

It was not _enough_ , though. _Never_ enough, and Ben seemed to think so too, lips trailing down her skin to graze her neck, sucking and biting as she whimpered beneath him, her clothes suddenly far too hot to countenance. Rey squirmed then, and she released her hands from behind him to loosen the ties that bound her top tunic, wishing be bare, to–

Ben’s hand shot down, staying hers.

“ _Rey._ ” He breathed, expression pained. “Not like this…This isn’t you.”

It _was_ though. It was. A more uninhibited version perhaps, but _her_ undoubtedly, and she was about to say it, once her mind unfogged itself a little and she… she…

“You drugged me.” She spoke, tone dumbstruck.

“Yes.” He paused. “This was a gift.”

“I don’t understand.” Her words slurred.

“You were too fast Rey… I thought you’d be tied up with that cult for days, that I wouldn’t see you again. But perhaps Helm has some mercy after all.” He snorted. “Or perhaps I truly am forsaken. I suppose it doesn’t matter now.”

“Why…? Why doesn’t it matter?”

_BOOM._

The room, the very earth, shook.

“Because of that.”

Her mind was screaming at her, but sleep was taking her fast. In the distance, she heard more great _booms_.

_What have you done?_


	2. Prison Guard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So glad there are some nerds out there like me, and others willing to give this a a go. Ben POV, let me know your thoughts if you have any. It's been a while since I've written and while I'll shout to the rooftops that I'm a Rey and I don't need or care about anyone's approval, I'm secretly a Kylo and your comments and love help me to function as a normal human being out in the real word where I need to keep my nerdiness on the dl.
> 
> x
> 
> \- tiny

 

 

_Rey._

“Ren.”

The name stung. She was the only person who had power over the inverse, and it stung.

“Rey.”

It had been too many months for something witty. Perhaps she was not even here. Silence reigned.

“ _Why_? I understand the Docks, but why the temple? Master Snoke…”

_Because you are the daughter of a dead god and Snoke wanted your divinity for himself._

But he didn’t answer her. He could never answer her, and even now the guilt ate at him that he had ever been party to such a thing, that he could have ever been convinced that she was a plague, an evil to be wiped out.

He’d lost faith then.

Not in the pantheon, but his loyalty to Helm had been shattered, for he no longer found solace in his unspoken wisdom and solitude while the sun shone so brightly in his face, when his lips still burned, even now.

_I have no need for faint assurances and ghost feelings. My faith is in front of me. My faith is made flesh._

The Lord of Murder had perished, but here stood his antithesis, his truest progeny.

“You shouldn’t be here.” He murmured.

“I just need to know _why_. I _know_ it wasn’t for revenge. I know you did it for a reason. _Please._ ”

Her loyalty tore at him, made him want to confess everything, beg her to free him to serve at her side. But she was not alone in her status, and until enough died and the vessel refilled, her birthright was best hidden, especially from herself.

She was, after all, a Bhaalspawn. One of hundreds, if not thousands of children whose mothers had coupled with the vile God of Murder, who had partaken in his plan that they might slaughter their own children for the sake of resurrecting a god who had foreseen his own death. But the ritual had been disrupted, and now these children were loosed upon the earth, all with varying degrees of their father’s divinity, doomed and driven to annihilate one another until but one remained.

For that reason alone, he was thankful for her childhood, however dismal and disgusting it had been. Only Snoke and he had seen her unguarded mind, and now he had shored it up to the point where even Rey might never stumble across it. Let her ‘siblings’ destroy one another, while the best of them remained shielded to ascend the dais and claim her prize.

“ _Ben?”_

 _Ben_ again, and he realised he had been lost in reverie.

“Snoke was not what he seemed.” He paused. “But you knew that.”

Lich bodies were notoriously hardy, after all, and he knew between her and Phasma there was no way they had not uncovered the secret chamber in his bedroom, filled with canopic jars and the oppressive air of tormented souls.

“Why didn’t you _tell_ me, why didn’t you tell Phasma?”

He smirked. “Because he had something over me.”

“What?”

_You._

“Something extremely precious.”

His eyes found their way to the amulet on her neck, an amulet of Protection from Evil, the same she as had acquired the night he burned Athkatla down. He wondered at the fact that she still wore it, he wondered how much she recalled.

Rey frowned. “The sword?”

_My sword._

He would have said that, once. Once when he wanted to exterminate her on the spot, when he _hated_ her. Because Snoke wanted him to, because he _had_ to, because her every movement, every _breath_ tormented him. Because he would watch her as she stripped after battle and feel a hunger like he had never felt before, temptation that _burned_ him, heated that place that until then had been colder than the Wastes of Cania.

“Not the sword.” His voice cracked.

Rey for her part was closer now, almost pressed between the bars, fingers reaching through them.

“Then what?”

Their fingers touched.

“ _You.”_

There was little point in not saying it, none in fact, and Kylo said it because he knew what he was going to do next and he hated the idea that she might even entertain the fact that he was moved more by a sword than by her. Anakin, godhood, the dream of continuing that legacy was dead. Long dead. A shattered orb on the floor that he was happy to press his boots into and drive down to the earth.

“I don’t understand.”

“You do.”

Not all of it maybe, but this he knew she understood, so close their fingerprints were enmeshed, a slight hitch on her breathing, a flush to her cheeks.

“You feel it too.”

It was easy to be bold like this, he thought, when he no longer had anything to lose.

“I thought you _hated me_.” She sounded broken. “For so long I _thought…_ and then you left and you were _Kylo Ren_ and I…” But she choked at that point, unable to continue.

“For the longest time….”

He took a breath, knowing this needed to be right, to be perfect. Because this would be the last time, and he wanted her to understand ever she ever dwelled on this, if she ever searched her memories and wondered about what this was, if she ever _doubted._

He cleared his throat. “For the longest time I sought to follow my grandfather, to join the pantheon myself, to vanquish an evil so great that even the gods would need to take notice.”

“…And now?” Rey’s fingers were intertwined now.

He took a shaky breath. “Now I know better. Evil is a concept. It cannot be vanquished, nor is it so easily defined. Once you learn that, you recognise it everywhere, especially in yourself... I struggled, at first, and I envied you that you did not.”

Rey shook her head. “But I _do_.” She spoke. “Sometimes… I…” She trailed off.

_I know, darling, I know._

He had seen it, once. More than once.

 _Bloodlust_.

The same reason she had made mincemeat of the Beholder cult – her powers were growing, faster than he’d thought. Her pupils would dilate and the dance would begin, her rich and his remnant divinity singing in synchronicity until a thin mist of blood coated their skin and their ears rang with their own heartbeats.

An equal. Then. Now? Possibly not.

_Definitely not._

Rey breathed. “I struggle too, I have… _dreams._ ” Her brow furrowed, and she returned to the topic at hand. “But I still don’t understand how Snoke fits into this.”

“He doesn’t. That’s all that matters. Now.”

_He wanted what you have, what you are._

Rey’s eyes were trained on their hands, face closer to the bars, lips mere inches from his.

“The Order is dead. The Paladins have taken service in the temples and estates, or as prison guar–”

“–You should take service elsewhere.” Ben blurted the words, though he knew what her answer would be, the young woman narrowing her eyes.

The district bells rang.

“Not until I find out _why_ , Ben Solo. I _know_ there is more to it, and you’re a fool if you think I’m going anywhere before I figure it out!” The fire in her eyes returned. “It’s the records, isn’t it? You drained the vault to throw them off the fact that you burned the records… but why? What was Snoke up to? _Tell me._ ”

_Lists, lists and lists._

Records of as many Bhaalspawn as the withered Lich could gather, records of Rey’s mother, records of Bhaal. Turning away from the Order had been Snoke’s idea, but the arrogant creature hadn’t noticed Ben's turn far before that. Hadn’t known that he’d glanced into the decayed maw of evil and found not devotion to Helm but a longing to ascend, to conquer. Snoke thought himself a replacement for Bhaal, and the Order a blunt instrument by which he could claim a heritage that was his in depravity only.

Still though, Ben Solo had fallen that day. Devotion to Helm required both the lives of Snoke and Rey, for both were untethered threads of chaos that cut and mangled and _shredded_ any threads of fate that tried to bind them. But that alone did not make them inherently evil, and suddenly the lines were so blurred that it was all he could do to focus on _her_ , for he was alone in the darkness with the only truth a stinging sensation in his chest he had long thought cast aside.

_I love her. She is not evil. I cannot kill her._

Once this was articulated, the rest came simply.

_I love a Bhaalspawn._

And Bhaal’s murderous essence would not suffer multiple generations. They would murder one another, or be murdered until the sepulchre filled and the divinity was properly returned to a singular vessel. Which meant…

_Rey must become the Lady of Murder._

And as it had once before with Helm, everything else clicked into place. He was a paladin, and a paladin defended his faith.

_Eliminate her weaknesses._

The first, the simplest – kill the immediate threat and maintain her anonymity for as long as possible. That had been easier than he’d thought, though it had been wrenching. Many had died for the sake of those records. Atkathla had _burned_ , and he’d been mollified only by the truth that a reign under Rey would be far less bloody than all of the lives to be lost if Snoke ascended the dais, that this act was something that she could _never_ do.

The bells rang again, seemingly more insistently. In front of him, a great whoosh of air escaped from Rey. She had been studying him, watching his thoughts before she made to leave.

“I’m taking a post in the prison Ben, and I’m not leaving you until I figure this out.”

He watched as she stormed out, heart in his chest as he prepared to put the second part of his plan in motion. The plan was iterative, after all, though the second was much harder.

_Eliminate her weaknesses._

From a secreted crack in the wall, Ben retrieved his scroll of _Simulacrum._

Rey of the Slums was made weak by Ben Solo. Her attachment was known, and her judgement compromised. After all, had she not just spurned Athkatla with this appointment? He was a fallen Paladin, a thief and now a mass-murderer to boot and yet _still_ she had not turned her back on him.

Ben sighed, glancing into the vacant eyes of his illusory duplicate.

Rey may one day be unstoppable, but Ben Solo was not. He was mortal, able to be taken, able to be trapped, able to be killed, able to be _used._

He needed to die.


End file.
